


Tall Grass

by swooning



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 17:47:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3701187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's the only one who still smells real...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tall Grass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Charlotte Stein](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Charlotte+Stein).



He's the only one who still smells real. She knows it should bother her, but she can only find it reassuring. When he walks along next to her, never holding hands but somehow connected anyway, she knows he's there without even needing to look. When he brushes past her in the spotless house—on his way in from the garage, on his way through the kitchen, on his way somewhere because he's always moving—she catches his scent and smiles on the inside.

She'd advised him to clean up, blend in, but in this he's her opposite. He can't pretend to be what this place requires, because he's _never_ pretended. Of all of them, he's the most genuine. The one who can't hide what he is. The one, she suspects, who has been changed the least by all they've been through. He was stained before all this, stains that will never come clean. And now, even though he's showered and put on fresh clothes, he goes out into the woods beyond the wall and comes back smelling like himself again. Sharp, raw, musky, dirty. Like danger and death and things they need to remember. 

 _Blend in_. It was good advice, but she was glad he hadn't taken it. He’s better as he is. For all she's lost—too much, so much that she really doesn't recognize herself anymore—there's a sense in which she's better now too. More real, more alive. She's a person she could have never been in the life she had before, and while that is a horror, it is also a revelation.

She fears she'll lose her own edge in this pretty, fictional place. Become less than what she was. The scope of things seems smaller inside the walls, more circumscribed even than the prison. A place for cookies and manipulation, not guns and ultimatums. All the more important that he stay rough, stay alert. For all of them. When he paces, jittery and over-vigilant while the others speak in calm tones, she feels safer. He'll see it coming, whatever it is. He'll have her back. She'll have his. While they live, if they live.

The damp laundry smells like a distant, pleasant memory as she hauls a sheet from the mass and snaps it out, letting the breeze help her swing it over the line. She clips it firmly then steps back, her spine prickling at the obscured view. One piece on the line, one perimeter check. It isn't a habit she can break, so she reaches for a gun that isn't there and stalks around the yard. Broad daylight. A cool breeze. Beyond the manicured square with the clothes lines, the grass is still hip-high all the way to the back fence. While the house was vacant, nobody had bothered with the back lawn all summer. Wading through the grass, she marvels at how unkempt it looks to her in comparison to the neatly groomed front yards. She’s already changing, adapting, revising her concept of “normal.” Even though she knows that might spell death.

Movement on the back stoop catches her eye and she ducks instinctively, then catches herself and plasters on her Alexandria face. Dimples and lies. Turning, smiling, she sees him standing there. He looks naked without his crossbow, but not defenseless. His biceps shine like oiled wood below the ragged armholes of the shirt he's refused to give up, and he scans the fence line for long seconds before venturing a single step into the yard.

"You startled me." She lets her face relax and turns back to her laundry as he stalks closer. It will go faster with him there to keep a lookout. Her guard dog, silent and faithful and willing to kill to protect her. These people believed themselves safe behind their walls, but she knows that isn't true. He knows it, too. One of the reasons she trusts him.

The breeze slaps through the wet linens and shirts, making them tougher to wrangle. But she picks up her pace anyway, letting herself enjoy the anticipation. He isn't smoking. That’s usually a good sign, an indication of intent.

"Amost done," she reports when she picks up the last shirt.

"Mmm."

As she flips it over the cord and fastens the clip, something grazes her back and she flinches.

She always flinches. Always. Even though she knows it’s him, even though she knows it isn't the prelude to a blow or worse. And even though she knows that here, behind this sturdy fence, within this walled enclosure, with this man, she is as safe as it’s possible to be these days. She can’t just accept a touch, unqualified. The way he never seems to expect her to is a gift, every time.

He keeps his hand there, flattening it between her shoulder blades over the spot where all her anxiety seems to store itself. The muscles there had formed knots over a year ago that seem to be permanent features now. The low, dull, constant pain reminds her she’s alive. Still, the pressure and heat are exqusite. She can relax into that touch, if she lets herself. Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn’t.

The others are all busy, and the grass is high. She leads him away from the house, toward the fence, stifling a giggle that bubbles up from some forgotten place in her heart. _Sneaking out of the house to fool around_. They’re like teenagers again. Though as a teenager, she would have never dared this much.

When she lies on her back in the grass, mashing it down, she discovers it’s tall enough to block out everything but the sky and the tree beside them. They could be anywhere, suddenly. Anywhere in the world right now, any overgrown field full of risk and potential. Her heart speeds up and she likes it—the fear feels like peace to her, like truth.

He feels like another kind of truth, kneeling between her legs, eyeing her up and down for a long, silent moment before stretching out a solemn hand to palm her breast. She watches his fingers on her for a second, letting the heat seep through her clothes into her skin, reveling in the swift jolt of pleasure from her nipple to between her legs. _Pussy_ , her brain offers, but it’s Ed’s word and she rejects it with everything in her.

Above them, a single fluffy cloud drifts into view, giving her a new focal point. The tree is perfectly angled to block the worst of the afternoon glare, and dappled sunlight illuminates the bowl of grass around them like sparkling amber gems. It’s perfect, so perfect and beautiful she has to lift a hand to her eye to catch a startling tear.

He unfastens her pants, pressing his lips to her stomach just below her bellybutton before sitting back again to pull the fabric free. One shoe has to come off to allow it. She almost stops him—it would be more practical for her to keep her shoes and pants on and just roll over—but she doesn’t want to give up the view.

When he’s got the pants off that foot, she spreads her legs and reaches for him, but he smiles—a rare, fleeting quirk of mouth and eye, gone almost before she’s marked it—and shakes his head. He traces a finger down from her navel, giving her plenty of time to think about it. By the time he reaches her clit, she’s wet, aching for more than the careful, deliberate, cruelly brief touch he grants her. Then he slips his finger lower, sliding it inside her. Marking his spot for later.

He’s done this before. Dip his head, work his shoulders between her thighs, settle in. But it’s so good, every time, she can never quite believe in it. There is nothing soft about this man, _except_...his tongue mapping every inch of her sex, his nose nudging gently against her clit, his lips fondling hers. They’ve never kissed on the mouth. At times like this, she can’t bring herself to care. Everything comes at a price. This kiss is more intimate than anything she ever shared with her late husband. Brings her more joy, makes her feel more cared for. _Worshipped_.

The devotions don’t last very long, they never do, because the time for leisurely pleasures is behind them all. She lets him lick and suck her to an orgasm, and holds nothing back, biting her hand to keep from crying out as she spasms in bliss under his greedy mouth. At some point her eyes close, blocking out the grass and the golden sunlight and the single cloud. She snaps them open when he shifts away and the sudden draft chills her wet lips.

It’s her turn, but she doesn’t want to move just yet. He gives her that smile again, from beneath the shield of his hair. Then he reaches into one of the pockets of his much-abused shirt, and pulls out a shiny foil packet.

 _Oh_. A rarity. A blessing. It had been months since the last time.

“ _Yes_...” Her hands are shaking too badly to help; she can only watch, whimpering pathetically with need as he unzips his pants, fishes his rigid cock out, and smooths the rubber over his skin.

God only knew what the expiration date was on the thing. Or where he’d found it—there didn’t seem to be a store of them in the community stockpile. It might be no more effective than Saran Wrap and a prayer. But it is her one condition, and he’s managed to meet it so they can christen this house, and that is something. That is everything, by the standards of the day.

Wet as she is, she’s still tight, tense, and it takes both of them a minute to work him in. Deep, deeper, all the way, until all her senses are as full as her body. He moves, and she counters, and it’s much too sweet for her to avoid crying now.

The grass waves around them, past his shoulder, his straining hips, the beautiful line of his jaw where he bends his head beside hers. He works himself in and out in short, hard strokes, trembling under the pressure of his own wave of emotions. He’ll never tell her what they are. She doesn’t need to know. She flattens her hands on his strong back and pushes him deeper, keeping watch for both of them.

Everything brightens, becomes more acute. The keen press of a root under her left shoulder blade, the sharp scent of crushed vegetation and the rising odors of arousal and sweat. The slick, wet noise of their bodies joining, the almost-pain of his strokes against her sensitive post-orgasmic cunt. The blue of the sky could kill her with its clarity.

He grunts once when it’s almost over, then shudders through his climax, panting into her neck.  When he pulls back, for one moment he catches her eye and she sees it all—pure panic and pain and regret and fear and longing and lust and _there’s really nothing pure about it, is there_? It’s the truth, and it’s everything, all there in his eyes. It has nothing to do with what they’ve just done—the sex merely brought his wall down for that brief interval.

She closes her eyes against it. Blind, she reaches for her pants, yanking them into position from that one ankle, pulling them back on by touch. She can feel the sun on her face, and wonders what it would be like to simply stay there. Lie back in the sun, experience joy, then finally let go of everything and rest, really rest.

But they’re too safe here for that. It isn’t an option. The only thing coming for her in this yard is squirrels and more laundry. And probably spying children, if they linger too long. Sighing, she opens her eyes and sits up, brushing herself off. Wiping her face on her sleeve.

He catches one of her hands, trapping her fingers between his and then, to her astonishment, brings them up to his lips for a kiss so quick she tells herself she must have imagined it. Then, with another scan around the fence line, he's gone. Off to hunt more animals or kill more dead things or play with motorcycles or whatever he has scheduled for the rest of the day.

The lone cloud has gathered some friends, and together they slide in front of the sun, greying out the vivid colors of the afternoon. A fitting end note, signalling the charmed interlude is over. She doesn’t mourn its passing, and she also doesn’t let herself wonder when it might happen again. She’s just glad they’ve both decided to allow it to happen at all.

 

 


End file.
